2017-18 Open Educational Resources Grants recipients announced

This is an important project, led by my team in the Taylor Institute (go, Ykje and Samara!). We’re all looking forward to seeing what the grant recipients come up with this year.

OER grants fall under two streams: “adopt and adapt” and “create.” The former category consists of projects in which grant-holders redevelop existing materials for their OERs, whereas the latter involves the inception of an OER from the foundation up.

The OER Pilot has invited instructors to submit project proposals. In the adopt and adapt model, accepted projects are funded to allow for two undergraduate student researchers to apply two to three online resources with course- and lesson-based outcomes. At the same time, instructors employ graduate students to peer review resources for their project courses. Finally, faculty selects and decides on the most appropriate resource.

A few questions:
1- How much are the grants?
2 – Have all of your instructors who received grants adopted the resources they had their graduate students review? If not, what happens with the grant funding?
3 – Can you explain this part in more detail: “In the adopt and adapt model, accepted projects are funded to allow for two undergraduate student researchers to apply two to three online resources with course- and lesson-based outcomes.”?

They’re small grants for the pilot – $4,000 each. Not enough to make anything substantial, but more than enough to find and integrate existing OERs, or to make a small-ish resource.

They’re still in the process of actually receiving the funding, but once it’s transferred, there’s not much we can do – aside from public shaming… SHAME! I’m hoping the visibility of the pilot will prevent things going off the rails that way…

For Adopt – this was the initial plan for the entire pilot, having 2 undergrad students act as researchers to discover what existing OERs are already available – textbooks or other content/resources – that match the learning outcomes from the course (taking the course outline, beefed up with info about the actual outcomes if needed, so the students know what to look for). Ideally, these students would have already taken the course, so they’re familiar with the content/concepts/teaching and can find things that kind of fit. Then, grad students would review what the undergrads found, looking for quality, pedagogical appropriateness, etc. And then the instructor gets final say on what they actually integrate into their course.